The last few weeks have brought some extraordinary weather across the UK. While many of us have welcomed the sunshine, the prolonged heat and lack of rainfall have created challenging conditions for gardeners and flower farmers. It feels as if we're a month ahead. It's a timely reminder that our growing seasons are becoming increasingly unpredictable, with flowers often racing through their lifecycle far more quickly than they once did.
For flower pressers, this means keeping a closer eye on the garden than ever before. Many of our summer favourites have come and gone in what feels like the blink of an eye.
If you've been meaning to start a pressing project, now is the moment. In the garden, we're pressing sweet peas, California poppies, cornflower, nigella, cosmos, nasturtium and geranium cranesbill. For larger projects and commissions we're pressing heritage geraniums, towering macleaya stems and rooty ferns.
If out foraging, keep your eye out for the last of the wild poppies; always rewarding and fun to press are buttercups, red clover, oxeye daisies and wild carrot which are in abundance.
Keep your flower press close at hand and don't wait for the perfect moment, some of the most rewarding specimens are flowering right now.
Here is a pressing guide for the summer season, highlighting a few of our seasonal favourites along with a few tips to help you get started with your own pressings.
Cosmos: The more you cut, the more they flower. We're particularly fond of Cosmos 'Apricotta' for its soft, unusual colouring, and Chocolate Cosmos, whose deep burgundy-brown petals have an almost velvet quality, making gorgeous pressings. Cosmos petals can shrink in the press if there isn't enough pressure, so make sure yours is tightly bound.
Geranium Cranesbill: The name comes from the appearance of the seedhead, which in many of the species forms into a long beak-like column that resembles a crane’s bill. You can cut as many as you like for pressing as they will come back at you with more and more flowers. Try to incorporate the flower, beaky seedhead, and bud to record the whole lifecycle of the plant.
Nasturtiums: There is something wonderfully unruly about a nasturtium, given half a chance it will scramble over everything in reach. Press some of the flowers in profile; with others, place their wide, flat trumpets face down, taking care to spread each petal fully. Press the leaves too - almost perfectly circular, they fade with ethereal beauty.
Coreopsis: Deadhead regularly to direct energy away from seed production, and you will be rewarded with flowers all summer long. Their dainty stems and neatly arranged petals in yellow and orange through to deep burgundy make for beautiful pressings. Press open flower heads face down, as well as buds to add character to compositions.
Buttercups: just one of the many wildflowers that are part of the enormous Ranunculaceae family. They press beautifully and quickly, which makes them one of the most pleasing wildflowers to start with. A lovely one to do with children, take your press with you and press amongst the flowers.
Nigella: the delicate foliage fanning out around each flower is how it gets its charming familiar name, “love-in-a-mist.” Place flower heads face down, and press down firmly - you may need to force the central pistil to flatten its profile. You will be amazed by how well their starry heads preserve.
Sweet Pea: they come in all sorts of wonderful colours and will produce gorgeous scented flowers all summer, as long as you keep cutting. Towards the end of the season, cut and press their long stems and curly tendrils to capture their characterful shape and structure.
Cornflower: a fascinating flower with a deeply symbolic history (see The Modern Flower Press), and lovely to press with its slim, elegant wavering stems. One stem will give you multiple flowers. Loose petals may detach from the main flower when pressed - store in an envelope until ready to glue.